Pursuits

The Farm-to-Table Restaurant Chain

Some Dakota farmers started a restaurant to sell their goods in the nation’s capital. It’s done so well, they’ll open a fifth in 2015

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By Bob Parks

December 30, 2014 at 1:05 PM UTC

This article is for subscribers only.

This article is part of the December 29, 2014 issue of businessweek.

0115P FEATURE FARMERS 01 — The flagship location, three blocks from the White House, has generated $68 million in sales since September 2008.
Photographer: Harry Gould Harvey IV for Bloomberg Businessweek

Spoken aloud, the business plan sounded about as viable as planting citrus groves in the Bakken oil fields. Seeking a way to sell directly to consumers, a group of North Dakota farmers banded together about a decade ago to start an upscale, farm-to-table restaurant chain on the East Coast. There are easier ways to cut out the middleman than opening a restaurant thousands of miles away. “We really didn’t know what we were doing,” admits Mark Watne, the 53-year-old head of the state’s farmers’ union. “But we were trying to find some avenue for our products and not end up with just another commodity.”